An Eye for an Eye
by Valiance
Summary: Ezio's first kill is swift and unrepentant. Its motive maps out the rest of his entire existence.


Crowds of people pressed around him on all sides. Trailing dresses with the faint smell of perfume, bulging doublets and the reek of sweat, Florentine accents mingling with Roman, Venetian, Milanese, gossiping and admiring the paintings on display in the exhibition. Ezio's senses were on hyperalert. He was alive in a way he'd never been before: seeing everything, hearing everything, missing nothing. Watching every little twitch of muscle in his target, the slightest change in his position, hanging on to every word of his conversation.

His father's old friend, mocking the man he betrayed and his family in one breath. Chatting about a sculpture the next.

Bragging about how that last Auditore boy flew from Florence, would never come back, would simply perform a coward's act and vanish forever. Ignorant that even as he laughed, he was a stone's throw away from him, a looming white spectre of death.

Ezio had killed before, but that had been different. The guards had cornered him in the courtyard of Palazzo Auditore, with orders to kill. What else could he have done? They had duelled him, two guardsmen against one inexperienced boy, and he had defeated them. Face to face, honourably. He'd barely known how to wield his sword, his body acting of its own accord.

Here was a target, not an opponent. A podgy, weak man, smug and surrounded by the great influences of high Italian society. Unaware there was nothing here to protect him from his end, save Ezio's whim.

Ezio was calm. Empty. Every bone, every sinew in his body, was ready. Just like when he'd fought those guards, it was like he was born for this, born to sever life-threads as easily as breathing, despite his entire life built up on _Thou shalt not kill_, his father impressing on him the importance of leading a moral life, a good, respectable life, of putting others before yourself, of working towards the betterment of society.

It had all fallen away. Here he was, in his father's very own robes, his father's very own blade resting cold against his arm. A kind of cruel irony.

And here was his target. Anything else, anyone else, was miles and miles away, in another world.

He stepped out of the crowd. His fury had been a low burn for so long, forced down by patience and waiting. Now it surged up from his stomach up to his heart, igniting his whole being into a blaze of revenge.

Alberti looked into his eyes. Mouth open. Dim incomprehension.

Ezio strode forwards.

"You...!" The traitor turned to run.

His back was exposed. From Ezio's wrist sprung the hidden blade.

Plunged forwards and out, again and again.

Soft flesh giving way like warm butter, thick red liquid gushing over his hands and arms.

One strike for every member of his family, surviving and departed.

The Gonfaloniere of Justice did nothing but make a pathetic sound, and Ezio caught him as he fell to the floor like so much fat and meat. Maybe he would slash his face. Slit his throat, watch him choke. Cut off his fingers one by one. Carve out his heart as Alberti had his own when he'd sent his heart – his family – to the gallows.

There was _Thou shalt not kill. _But was there not also _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth_?

Alberti wheezed, looking into his eyes with the fading light of a dying man, pain and fear etched into weak, piggish little eyes. "You would have done the same, to save the ones you love..."

A stranger's voice replied. "Yes, I would. And I have."

The target shuddered and stilled. Ezio rose, feeling a million miles away from the crowd of faces, all staring at him. The fearful expressions made the fire blaze yet higher within him, broke out a roar over the hushed silence.

"The Auditore are not dead!" The speaker was no stranger: it was his own voice, tearing out of his own throat, above his own beating heart and trembling muscles and the metal scent of blood. "I'm still here! _Me_! Ezio! Ezio Auditore!"

The crowd scattered in all directions, a woman's horrified cry of, "_Signor Gonfaloniere_!" mixed in with desperate calls for the guards. Ezio leaped up some crates to the side of the building, scaling up onto the roof and away from the crazed mass. Crossing over from one world into another, into a godless world, a lawless world. A world of death and fire, a vengeful conflagration that was unsatisfied with only a single life. Before his eyes, a new path ever upwards unfurled, one littered with the bloodied corpses of the men responsible for destroying all he had ever loved.

Just as he knew he could kill Alberti, he knew he could kill them all. He would go forward, unafraid, and he would not rest until he'd dragged all of them down to hell – if there was one – with him.

Gods and laws were for lesser men. Ezio Auditore was not one of them.

Ezio Auditore was an assassin.


End file.
